Sullivan & Cromwell: The Dulles Brothers, Corporate Power and the Birth of the CIA

Few realize the role corporate lawyers have played in shaping the past 150 years of world history. Sullivan & Cromwell is perhaps the most infamous example. It oversaw the birth of the multinational corporation and launched coups in third world countries decades before there was an OSS or CIA. It was a key player in building up the German war machine. It helped shape international law allowing the holocaust to occur. Its ties to Germany led it to commit treason helping Germany undermine America’s war effort. It undermined all attempts to reign in corporate power. Its most notorious partners were John Foster Dulles, future Secretary of State, and Allen Dulles, the most influential CIA director in the agency’s history. Even before rising to those heights, the Dulles Brothers helped launch the cold war and helped the Nazis escape justice,  while putting the Nazis’ German corporate backers, who made fortunes off slave labor and the Holocaust (as did their American and European partners), back into power. While in office the Dulles Brothers carried out the will of Sullivan and Cromwell’s clients by launching coups in Guatemala and Iran. Sullivan & Cromwell partners became Senators, Ambassadors, a Supreme court Justice. Sullivan Cromwell partners also sat on the board of directors of their clients the multinational corporations.

Of course Sullivan & Cromwell was only one of the ignominious examples of the revolving door between the government and the corporate world. Other powerful corporate law firms that would provide the architects of the cold war included Carter Ledyard & Milburn (Frank Wisner who ran OPC and the CIA covert ops division) and the Donovan and Leisure firm (where OSS founder William “Wild Bill” Donovan was a partner). The Wall Street investment firm Dillon Read & Co was also highly influential, producing James Forrestal, Paul Nitze, and William Draper. In turn, these corporate lawyers were servants of even more powerful and wealthy robber barons and their heirs, like the Rockefellers and W. Averell Harriman. Their clients included oil cartels, and big investment banks who have been robbing the public for decades, like Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. They also represented the nuclear power industry. Thus it will become clear that despite all the propaganda about freedom and democracy, American foreign and domestic policy has long been about servicing the business interests of multinational corporations.  (more...)

Sullivan & Cromwell: The Dulles Brothers, Corporate Power and the Birth of the CIA

Related:

Christopher Simpson on 'The Splendid Blond Beast'